Syria may have dominated the G8 meetings, but at its heart, it is an economic summit.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said the point of the G8 is to fire up economies and drive growth around the world, but leaders certainly have their work cut out for them with punishing unemployment weighing down the world economy.

Niall Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard University, said the G8 leaders achieved “nothing” this past week.

“They said they would try to nail down their corporate tax regimes so that the big corporations can't pay zero tax. But I doubt very much that anything will come of this,” Ferguson told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday.

“The big corporations will continue to dodge whatever taxes we come up with," Ferguson said. And that's because we create ever more complex regulations and tax systems, which big corporations, of course, have the expertise to avoid. And it's the little guy who ends up paying.”

But that is something nations have been trying to deal with long before this latest G8 summit.

“In the wake of the financial crisis, there's been a concerted effort, which David Cameron's been pushing hard for to try to reduce the amount of tax evasion that goes on. But it's actually quite difficult for the G8 to do what needs to be done. After all, it's a much less dominant group of players than it used to be. The world has changed,” Ferguson said.

You can watch Amanpour’s full interview with Ferguson in the video above.

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